Farewell, Election Day

I am truly disappointed in Mr. Will's assertions. He in my view has been spot on in many instances even though our ideology is significanty in opposition. For years we have derided Americans for their apathy at the poles. Now that there are ways to get more people to the polling places his comments are to suggest the quality goes down when the quantity goes up.
Mr. Will I am a 64 year old women who has listened to you and read your books for many years. This column makes me feel like I am losing a friend.

Will shows his elitist streak again. While he is often out of touch with average Americans, this is above and beyond. How about people who work two jobs and can only reach the poles on weekends? Disenfranchise them!! He is contradictory too. In one breath he says the people most likely to vote early are highly partisan and in the next they are people too lazy to go to the poles. Get a grip George.

Too bad for the Republicans because my guess is that everyone should vote early and make their decisions now. I think everyone now needs to run to the polls and vote this George Bush administration and their fellow Repulicans and show them the door early.

I voted last week, absentee ballot, why should I wait for more trashy republican lies?

Why now right a column on the Republican Party's obsession with voter suppression?

Here's hoping I'm not on any "caging" list this year.

Mr. Will may think its patriotic to have to wait in voter lines two to three hours in some of our urban areas. Such nonsense. Horrah for the US Postal Service and for vote early. Turn out will be higher and that is so much better for the Democrats!!

I would like to suggest that Mr. Will enter the 21st century voting - not electronically that can be hacked, but vote by mail as it is done in Oregon. There is no problem of hanging chads. There is no intimidation in lines. There are no lines to discourage voters. There are no malfunctions in the voting machine, as all it takes is a pen or pencil and the ability to color in a bubble. And there is a paper record for recounts.

Yep, that's how it was back in the day... We all came together in one place, on that one day and it was a big "coming together."

Today's a different day George. When we sit at our computers or play or hand-helds, we aren't "inwardly focusing." We're connecting. We're connecting with more people more profoundly. You and me George. We're communicating right now. Instead of you standing up on a big stage saying something with me sitting down below quietly listening (maybe clapping every now and then or running up to you for a quick hand shake after the speech) we're now directly communicating - you said something, I'm saying something and hundreds of our "closest friends" are also commenting.

Time and proximity don't mean the same things they used to mean. Just because we're not in the same place or at the same time doesn't mean we're not all doing it together.

I'm glad I dont have to worry about voting this time around as I will be sitting this one out. Good luck everyone.

I'm sure glad I dont have to worry about voting this year, as I'm going to sit this one out.

To George Will:
I respectfully disagree with your article, in particular, this line:

"But surely the quality of the electoral turnout declines when the quantity is increased by 'convenience voting.'"

Who is to say which votes constitute "quality" and which votes do not? Are we to assume that a person who is willing be inconvenienced, and perhaps drive a few blocks to their polling place, is somehow more informed than the voter who mails in their ballot? Do the poor voters who speak of have a less valuable opinion just because they are traditionally non-voters?

One could make an argument that the voters who pay attention to broadcast news on a regular basis could be less informed, and thus considered the lower quality voters. These voters are exposed to more partisan spin from campaigns and their surrogates, and thus more likely to allow things like a candidate???s appearance, or choice of clothing, or small gaffes in remark, to impression their views. This is where we get voters who say ???I would rather have a beer with candidate ___???, and so forth. I know people who can???t tell you who the current President is, who show up to the polls. I also know history buffs and current events buffs who???d simply rather mail in their ballot or vote early.

Don???t you think it a bit arrogant to judge the quality of a person???s opinion based on the convenience of their chosen voting method?

In a few weeks we will make a choice that will decide our future. I follow a economist named bob proctor who has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly. He perfectly predicted the current real estate market meltdown ,and the picture he paints about what will happen in the next couple years Is terrifying. He thinks it will be worse then the great depression. Banks in the US are going under one after the other. Country wide the largest morgage bank in the world Bear Stearns and Lehman brothers , and Merrill Lynch which are 3 out of the top 5 wall street firms. And now Fanny and Freddy which hold 50 percent of the home loans in the United States. The goverment took them over because they are essentially bankrupt. If they didn't the entire financially system would virtually shut down, the stock market would crash And we would suffer beyond what any of us have seen before The future of these companies will fall into the hands of our next president
Bush just like Mcain doesn't understand the economy.

That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it
He does not understand exactly what is broken. Its no surprise that he doesnt. The people that make up these
securities use complex math models very few people understand.
Bush and mccain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.


Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks take risks with all of our future.
Now Phil Graham is the head of mccains economic policy ,and mccain wants to make him the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time bush met with his economic advisors was in march. He either didnt realize or didnt care that anything was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy in our lifetime.
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as bush has done mccain would be
incredibly worse because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a surplus like bush did but a tanking economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 deficit. Most of Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will do get what you have always __________

When it comes to policy bush and mccain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?

The chairman of mcains campaign recently said that people don't vote on issues

they vote on a personality composite which means. He is trying to sell you personality instead of results.
He believes people will vote against there own self interests.

Lets teach him we are smarter then that .
Hold them accountable now while it will still help
Elect Obama Biden 2008

Mr. Will,

I remember the thrill of seeing my parents go out and vote at the local polling station, seeing other citizens go to their booths, and then coming out with the "I Voted" stickers. I registered to vote at age 17 to be ready for my first election in 2004.

Yet, living in Washington state which will soon become an all-absentee state in the next few years, having my ballot mailed home doesn't in the least dissolve any sense of community and excitement. Groups of friends mention to one another their ballots arriving in the mail, and while treating ballots like another piece of paper work may be typical for some, the majority of residents treat their ballots as one of the most important pieces of mail we receive, and there is an equal sense of duty of responsibility in affixing the stamps and dropping the ballots in the mail as there would be in visiting a polling station. Most citizens (minus those I mentioned who treat ballots as "task" and the partisans you mention in your article) wait until the last week of the election to finally mail in our ballots, and we have the opportunity to carry it into a station or post mark our ballots on election day, and I do this as well.

Election Day still means a great deal to most Americans. However, I would argue that election day has less to do with the sense of community of going to the polls on a particular day than the sense of collective weight and responsibility leading up to election days, and then the viewing parties and late-night cable news marathons that accompany election day after the polls close, and then the reaction of communities the next morning when results are announced.

Absentee ballots give citizens a great degree of choice and freedom in regards to spending time and effort in researching and debating before casting their votes than those of people who stop by their polling stations as an afterthought after work on the first Tuesday of November because they heard it on the radio, and felt guilty for arriving home without their "I Voted" stickers for thier children,

George, I somewhat agree with your viewpoint on an intellectual basis but would like to remind you of one factor you didn't consider: with the enormous potential voter turn-out expected in this election, many of us can't (not won't) devote the hours it's probably going to take to stand in lines. Just one very small example -- I may no longer have small children, but I certainly remember being charged a fee, per every 15 minutes after closing time at the daycare center when I once ran late due to a flat tire. Early voting has one major drawback: you do miss the feeling of being part of your contry's election process. The pride, the sense of community, the sense of being part of a greater cause & citizen responsibility are things I will sorely miss this year, as I have my own situation that precludes standing in hours-long lines. I am quite sure it "just won't feel the same" and I also suspect that I will miss the feeling so much that I will do whatever is required in the future to avoid the early-voting methods available, but unfortunately, I have no choice but to bow to necessity this year.

Categorizing those who vote by mail with the assumption that they're "too lazy" to get off the couch is incredibly insulting. Actually it takes foresight and a dedication to the process to recognize a problem perhaps months in advance and not to allow any unchangeable situation to affect whether or not you can do your civic duty.

Lazy is allowing situation rule your attendance at the polls; lazy is NOT going out of your way to make sure that no one / no thing will stop you from casting your ballot.

George, I somewhat agree with your viewpoint on an intellectual basis but would like to remind you of one factor you didn't consider: with the enormous potential voter turn-out expected in this election, many of us can't (not won't) devote the hours it's probably going to take to stand in lines. Just one very small example -- I may no longer have small children, but I certainly remember being charged a fee, per every 15 minutes after closing time at the daycare center when I once ran late due to a flat tire. Early voting has one major drawback: you do miss the feeling of being part of your contry's election process. The pride, the sense of community, the sense of being part of a greater cause & citizen responsibility are things I will sorely miss this year, as I have my own situation that precludes standing in hours-long lines. I am quite sure it "just won't feel the same" and I also suspect that I will miss the feeling so much that I will do whatever is required in the future to avoid the early-voting methods available, but unfortunately, I have no choice but to bow to necessity this year.

Categorizing those who vote by mail with the assumption that they're "too lazy" to get off the couch is incredibly insulting. Actually it takes foresight and a dedication to the process to recognize a problem perhaps months in advance and not to allow any unchangeable situation to affect whether or not you can do your civic duty.

Lazy is allowing situation rule your attendance at the polls; lazy is NOT going out of your way to make sure that no one / no thing will stop you from casting your ballot.

Apparently Mr Will has no concept of what it is like to have to actually work to pay the bills or having get ones children to school. In 2004, many people in stood in line for 12 hours before they could cast their ballot. In 2006, polling stations lost power for hours at a time while their neighbors across the street had the lights on. With our current state of questionable voting integrity, I am absentee voting for sure. Please don't reduce it to couch potatoism when I am so interested in voting that I have thought ahead and filled out the parer work to vote from home. A place I don't have to be surprised by my name not on the roster or the lines out the door due to lack of performance by Bush's buddie's Diebold machines. Give me a break Mr Will.

I wrote a letter to the editor of the Journal and Constitution in Atlanta right after the 2000 election: my polling place had a 4-hour line from 7am until it closed late at night. I came by in the morning, only to leave and return after work. Women with children had to drop out, pregnant women too. Older people could not stand in line and left. At (I believe) around 8pm, Georgia was "called" by CNN as going to Bush; people left discouraged. This didn't protect our "Democratic right to vote." Cathy Cox, then Secretary of State, moved to correct the situation, but in truth, it happens all too often throughout the country. I do think voting early should be restricted to the last two weeks before election day, but until George is willing to stand in line for the old, the people with children, or the businesses that must run on election day, we need early voting.

I generally take Mr Will???s comments as gospel, and I do in this case also, so I will hid my face and change my voice when I vote early ??? again ??? this election season. Having two children under 10 years of age and a job that takes seventy hours a week of my time, early voting is just, well, easier, and I do not need more complication in my life. BUT, a different issue, to truly bring the population together in a collective explosion of civic pride and duty, let us COMBINE Election Day with Tax Payment Day and let us see what kind of nation we will forge then. Surf.